Flyer was founded by John Coval in 1930 as the Western Auto and Truck Body Works Ltd. Reflecting an increased focus on bus manufacturing, it changed its name in 1948 to Western Flyer Coach.

In the 1960s, the company further focused on the urban transit bus market. In 1971, the then-financially struggling Western Flyer was sold to the Manitoba Development Corporation, an agency of the Manitoba government, and renamed Flyer Industries Limited.[1]

On July 15, 1986, Jan den Oudsten, a descendant of the family who created the Dutch company Den Oudsten Bussen BV, purchased Flyer Industries from the Manitoba government, changing its name to New Flyer Industries Limited. Den Oudsten Bussen B.V was a bus manufacturer in its native country, the Netherlands.

In 2003, King County Metro of Seattle, WA placed an order for 213 hybrid buses, the largest ever for hybrid buses up to that time.[2] This record was broken when MTA New York ordered 825 hybrid buses of a different company that same year (despite they ordered between 2004 and 2007). On December 15 of the same year, New Flyer announced that Harvest Partners, Inc., a New York-based private equity firm, had entered into definitive agreements to acquire New Flyer Industries Limited, from KPS Special Situations Fund. Lightyear Capital, a New York-based private equity firm, joined Harvest as a co-investor in the transaction. John Marinucci, CEO of New Flyer, said, "This is exciting news for New Flyer" And he went on to say that KPS specializes in turning around struggling businesses and that they typically do not hold assets after the turnaround has been accomplished. And that ever since the KPS purchase, New Flyer had achieved excellent operational and financial performance. He especially praised the employees.

On August 19, 2005, New Flyer announced the closing of an initial public offering in Canada of 20,000 Income Deposit Securities, becoming a publicly traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange. That year also saw the introduction of optional redesigned front and rear endcaps for their buses. The new endcaps are an attempt to modernize and streamline the look of their fleet, which is more or less a box on wheels. Also, a new "R" suffix was applied on all units produced with the new endcaps. The redesigned endcaps made their debut with the 2005 E40LFR built for the Vancouver trolleybus system.

Between 2005 and the end of 2009, New Flyer supplied a total of 262 low-floor trolleybuses to the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority (now known as TransLink), of which 74 were articulated (model E60LFR). The original order, placed in late 2003, was for 188 E40LFR units and 40 E60LFR units.[3] The first E40LFR was delivered in July 2005,[4] and the rest of the 40-foot (12 m) units were delivered between August 2006[5] and September 2007.[6] The first articulated, E60LFR trolleybus arrived in Vancouver in January 2007.[7] TransLink decided to order an additional 34 articulated units, making the total 74, and delivery of the 73 production-series E60LFR units took place between October 2007 and autumn 2009.

Another purchaser of trolleybuses from New Flyer was SEPTA, operator of the Philadelphia trolleybus system. That agency placed an order with New Flyer in February 2006 for 38 E40LFR[8] "trackless trolleys", as trolleybuses are known there. The first vehicle was delivered in June 2007, and the remaining 37 were received by SEPTA during 2008.[9]

Brazilian bus manufacturer Marcopolo S.A. acquired a 19.99% stake of New Flyer on January 23, 2013 for $116-million, the maximum it could acquire without offering to buy out other shareholders.[13] New Flyer purchased Orion's aftermarket parts business from Daimler on March 1, 2013 such as inventory, accounts receivable, license to use proprietary part designs for Orion buses and included certain regulations for $29 million (it also acquired some of Orion's outstanding orders at the time of shutdown). Under the purchase, Daimler has entered into an arrangement to supply the parts to DBNA for customer warranty support.[14] On June 21, 2013, New Flyer Industries announced the acquisition of North American Bus Industries.[15][16]

This trolleybus model was only built for BC Transit (Vancouver, British Columbia). Built initially as model E901A, production continued as model E902, which may be identical (no differences between the E901A and E902 have ever been identified).[20] A total of 245 were built.[19] Eighty E901A and E902 trolleybuses were sold to EPTM (Mendoza, Argentina) in 2008.